Question: Has their ever been a position in the American government of Proconsul, Master of Horse or Viceroy?

Yesterday’s question answered below: what is a Quonset hut?
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History for 7/12/2008
Birthdays: Gaius Julius Caesar is 2,108 years old, Henry David Thoreau, Oscar Hammerstein, Kirsten Flagstad, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Neruda, George Eastman, Milton Berle, Cheryl Ladd, Van Cliburn, Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, Josiah Wedgewood- of Wedgewood china and pottery, Richard Simmons, Krysty Yamaguchi, Bill Cosby is 71

783AD – Queen Bertha "with the big feet", wife of French king Pippin III, died.

1817- For the first time in many years America wasn’t at war with anyone and political feuding had died down. James Monroe was elected President in what was considered a decidedly low-key election. A Boston newspaper named the Columbian Sentinel described the climate of the times as “The Era of Good Feeling”. The name stuck.

1861- The McCandles Massacre, the most famous Western shootout until the OK Corral. James Hickock earns his nickname Wild Bill by killing ten desperadoes in a free for all with sixguns and bowie knives. Interviewed by Harpers Weekly Mr. Hickock said :”I was wild and I struck savage blows.”

1863-The NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS- Arguably the largest civil disturbance in American History. Poor immigrant laborers, sick of the Civil War, and being forced into the army while rich men bought their way out, run wild in the streets in three days of looting. Labor history mentions that most of these laborers worked a 12-14 hour day, seven days a week, so fighting slavery seemed a moot point to them. The Harvard-Yale games went on throughout the Civil War and rich men like J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Roosevelt bought substitutes. The riot was sparked by a new draft office opening on 46th St & 3rd Ave. They started calling names just as the first lists of the dead from the Battle of Gettysburg were being published. A mob of 15,000 attacked and burned the Draft Board offices and overwhelmed the police. Writer Herman Melville watching the flames from a rooftop, said: “The Rats have taken over the City.” The mob attacked well dressed men “There goes a three hundred-dollar man!” Newspaperman and abolitionist Horace Greeley defended his New York World office with a small cannon in his lobby. The New York Times posted Gatling Guns on it’s roof and Wall St. banks boiled oil to drop from the rooftops like something out of the Middle Ages. Modern apologists for the rich prefer to focus on the racism of the mob. Indeed the Irish poor, targets of racism themselves, singled out black people as the cause of all their misfortunes and hanged many from lampposts as they burned and looted. They even torched a black little girl’s orphanage. The children had to be escorted by bayonet wielding militia to a barge in the East River for safety.
N.Y. Governor Horatio Seymour who’s own public contempt for Pres. Lincoln's policies help encourage the riots, had to borrow Union Army regiments from the battlefields of Gettysburg to restore order in New York City. Most of these soldiers were also Irish immigrants.

1863- After the defeat at Gettysburg Robert E. Lee's retreating army was pinned for awhile against the rain swollen Potomac River. As the surrounding Union army prepared to attack, a local minister went up to Yankee General Meade and protested fighting a battle on a Sunday. When Meade tried to reason with him, the minister replied:" As God's emissary I denounce the defiling of His day! Look ye to the heavens!" Almost as if on command a rainstorm burst out over their heads. Meade suspended the attack for that day.

1864- Jubal Early's Confederates are turned back from the gates of Washington D.C. Early didn’t think he could hold Washington but he was determined to loot and burn it and maybe in so doing draw Grant away from Richmond. Rebel skirmishers were reported to be as close as Georgetown and the greybacks said they could see the gleaming white dome of the US Capitol. Despite Union forces in the area being pathetically unprepared, Quartermaster General Meigs had to arm his accountants and they bussed out hospital invalids with guns, they still managed to turn Early away. President Lincoln went out to Fort Stevens near present day Walter Reade Medical Center to watch the fight. During the shooting Col. Oliver Wendel Holmes a future Chief Justice called out to the man in the 8 dollar stovepipe hat peering over the parapet:" Get down ya damn fool! You’re drawing fire. You wanna get us all Killed?!" The last time a sitting U.S. President was under enemy fire.

1870- Celluloid film patented. The inventor had been trying to find a substitute for ivory billiard balls. Inventor George Eastman later perfected the sprocket and hole system of roll film for cameras, replacing the large glass plates.

1876- Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock arrived in Deadwood South Dakota to prospect for gold, see some old friends like Calamity Jane, and play a little poker.

1914 – Young reform school graduate Babe Ruth makes his baseball debut, as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

1928 - 1st televised tennis match.

1948 - 1st jets to fly across the Atlantic -6 RAF de Havilland Vampires.

1962 – The Rolling Stones 1st performance at the Marquee Club, London. One band member named Elmo Lewis changed his name to Brian Jones.

1979- Carmine "The Cigar" Galante, boss of the Gambino Mafia family, was blown away over coffee and spumoni at a small Brooklyn restaurant called Joe & Marys. He was finished off with a 45 cal. slug through the eye, his cigar still in his lips. The hit was ordered by Paul Castellano. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post set a new journalistic low when a reporter shimmied up a drainpipe and got a photo of the Don's bullet riddled body before the cops could throw a sheet over it. Murdoch of course, put it in color on the front page.



1979- Disco Demolition Night. Chicago Fans could get into Comisky Park for 98 cents if they each brought a Disco record to burn. Thousands of records were thrown at the players like Frisbees while they were trying to play, so Chicago was forced to forfeit the game. “I love the Nightlife, I love the Nightlife…”

1984- Geraldine Ferrarro named the Vice Presidential running mate of Walter Mondale. They lose in a landslide to Reagan-Bush.

1990- TV series Northern Exposure premiered.
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Yesterday’s question: what is a Quonset hut?

Answer: A simple prefabricated corrugated steel structure that could be set up quickly. In 1941 the Navy wanted something like the British Davis huts. This design was made at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Quonset huts served a variety of purposes from military airfields, settlements at Antarctica, to war surplus college annex buildings.